"Mr. Foster," she said, "I have asked you to see me to my carriage, but really I want you to do more than that. I want you to go with me to poor Alresca's. He is progressing satisfactorily, so far as I can judge, but the dear fellow is thoroughly depressed. I saw him this afternoon, and he wished, if I met you here to-night, that I should bring you to him. He has a proposition to make to you, and I hope you will accept it." "I shall accept it, then," I said. She pulled out a tiny gold watch, glistening with diamonds. "It is half-past one," she said. "We might be there in ten minutes. You don't mind it being late, I suppose. We singers, you know, have our own hours." In the foyer we had to wait while the carriage was called. I stood silent, and perhaps abstracted, at her elbow, absorbed in the pride and happiness of being so close to her, and looking forward with a tremulous pleasure to the drive through London at her side. She was dressed in gray, with a large ermine-lined cloak, and she wore no ornaments except a thin jewelled dagger in her lovely hair. All at once I saw that she flushed, and, following the direction of her eyes, I beheld Sir Cyril Smart, with a startled gaze fixed immovably on her face. Except the footmen and the attendants attached to the hotel, there were not half a dozen people in the entrance-hall at this moment. Sir Cyril was nearly as white as the marble floor. He made a step forward, and then stood still. She, too, moved towards him, as it seemed, involuntarily. "Good evening, Miss Rosa," he said at length, with a stiff inclination. She responded, and once more they stared at each other. I wondered whether they had quarrelled again, or whether both were by some mischance simultaneously indisposed. Surely they must have already met during the evening at the Opera! Then Rosa, with strange deliberation, put her hand to her hair and pulled out the jewelled dagger. "Sir Cyril," she said, "you seem fascinated by this little weapon. Do you recognize it?" He made no answer, nor moved, but I noticed that his hands were tightly clenched. "You do recognize it, Sir Cyril?" At last he nodded. "Then take it. The dagger shall be yours. To-night, within the last minute, I think I have suddenly discovered that, next to myself, you have the best right to it." He opened his lips to speak, but made no sound. "See," she said. "It is a real dagger, sharp and pointed." Throwing back her cloak with a quick gesture, she was about to prick the skin of her left arm between the top of her long glove and the sleeve of her low-cut dress. But Sir Cyril, and I also, jumped to stop her. "Don't do that," I said. "You might hurt yourself." She glanced at me, angry for the instant; but her anger dissolved in an icy smile. "Take it, Sir Cyril, to please me." Her intonation was decidedly peculiar. And Sir Cyril took the dagger.